Bitcoin plummets after rumors of massive cyberattack on cryptocurrency platform Binance

The price of bitcoin fell sharply on Thursday after several speakers reported a massive cyberattack on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which said it was investigating without confirming the hack. Binance announced Thursday that it had been the victim of a major hack with damages estimated at some $6.3 billion, with half of the funds having been frozen to prevent a massive theft.

Binance published several contradictory messages on the X platform, first assuring that all funds deposited by customers on its site were “totally safe”, before announcing, a little later, that it would cover “all losses”. The platform then indicated on its X account for Latin America that “the total amount impacted was approximately $6.3 billion.” “We have worked with specialist blockchain partners to freeze the affected assets; around 3 billion dollars have been frozen on-chain (blocked on the blockchain, Editor’s note) so far,” adds the press release.

Concerns over security protocol

In this context, the prices of all major cryptocurrencies briefly declined, with the exception of stablecoins which can, by definition, only fluctuate within very small margins. After falling by almost 5% at the end of the American session, bitcoin recovered and lost only 0.83% around 05:00 GMT, while ether showed a slight decline of 0.81%. BNB, a cryptocurrency issued by Binance, rebounded by 2.67% after having fallen by almost 10%.

The cyberattack on Binance comes as several observers are concerned that the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) models are jeopardizing cryptography and computer security protocols. Some have thus seen in a breakthrough, announced independently this week by OpenAI and Anthropic on the same IT concept, a first tangible sign of a turning point.

By refuting the so-called exponential time hypothesis (ETH), they have thus given a glimpse of the possibility of simplification of the decryption of encryption protocols, even if nothing practical can be learned from this demonstration immediately. However, the blockchain protocol, the foundation of cryptocurrencies, relies on cryptography to guarantee the theoretical inviolability of the system and the security of transactions.